# 5. Surf Nazi | Lost Hills

An episode of [Examined: The Backfire Effect](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1549249596), 26 Jun 2023, 35 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pscrb.fm/rss/p/pdrl.fm/e27c90/tracking.swap.fm/track/SxlTEPDY7xDg35RXkASs/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/31bb1c28-0fb5-4627-b8a7-ae32006cd7c1/b38690a5-239b-447b-850b-b00d010dfdfd/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=093755db-b947-43f4-a067-ae32006cd7cf

Mainland surfing has been steeped in the symbols of fascism since its inception. Iron Crosses, swastikas, Nazi uniforms…in the golden era of surfing, surfers flaunt them on their boards and in the early surf movies. Miki Dora is famous for his SS leather trench coat and using a board emblazoned with a giant swastika. He polices Malibu, forces newcomers, known as kooks, off their boards and off the beach. He lets everyone know that Malibu is his territory. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:15] Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey Lost Hills listeners, it's Dana. I wanted to
[0:22] Speaker 1: let you know that you can hear the entire new
[0:24] Speaker 1: season of Lost Hills ad-free along with other great binge
[0:27] Speaker 1: listens by becoming a Pushkin Plus subscriber. Find Pushkin Plus
[0:32] Speaker 1: on the Lost Hills show page in Apple Podcasts or
[0:35] Speaker 1: at pushkin.fm slash plus.
[0:45] Speaker 2: So the board that we're going to look at is
[0:48] Speaker 2: right over here that I'm going to take you over to.
[0:50] Speaker 2: But it's from the American Ladder Company or the Los
[0:54] Speaker 2: Angeles Ladder Company. We'll see in a moment.
[0:59] Speaker 1: I'm at the California Surf Museum in Oceanside with Jim Kempton.
[1:03] Speaker 1: He's the museum president. It's a small museum stuffed literally
[1:08] Speaker 1: to the rafters with surfboards. The collection includes the 110-pound
[1:12] Speaker 1: redwood planks that were used in the early days by
[1:15] Speaker 1: people like Mickey Dora's stepdad, Gard Chapin, the fiberglass and
[1:20] Speaker 1: foam longboards that became popular after World War II, and
[1:24] Speaker 1: the tiny, light, performance shortboards many pros use today. They
[1:29] Speaker 1: even have the surfboard that professional surfer Bethany Hamilton was
[1:32] Speaker 1: riding when she lost her arm to a shark attack
[1:35] Speaker 1: when she was 13. It has a bite out of it.
[1:39] Speaker 1: But right now, I'm looking at one of the first
[1:42] Speaker 1: commercially manufactured and mass-produced surfboards in America, which came out
[1:46] Speaker 1: in the 1930s. It's a thing of beauty, varnished redwood
[1:51] Speaker 1: with a balsa wood stringer. It evokes an old woody
[1:54] Speaker 1: station wagon crossed with a totem pole.
[1:56] Speaker 2: And at the very bottom of those boards was where
[2:01] Speaker 2: they put the swastika.
[2:05] Speaker 1: The first mass-produced surfboards in America had swastikas on them.
[2:10] Speaker 1: They were called, wait for it, swastika boards. That's right.
[2:16] Speaker 1: America's original surf brand is associated with what is now
[2:20] Speaker 1: a universal symbol of white supremacy and hate.
[2:25] Speaker 3: Right there.
[2:26] Speaker 1: And was it red or black or?
[2:28] Speaker 2: It was painted, it was generally black. It was actually
[2:32] Speaker 2: carved on them. So they were, yeah.
[2:37] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[2:40] Speaker 1: Swastika boards were made in L.A. by a company that
[2:42] Speaker 1: built prefab homes, and they were a huge hit.
[2:46] Speaker 2: They made all kinds of wooden products like ladders, and
[2:49] Speaker 2: they made these surfboards. And they put those swastikas on
[2:52] Speaker 2: them for reasons unbeknownst to anyone, I think, now.
[2:55] Speaker 1: A flyer advertising the boards shows a muscular, fair-haired man
[2:59] Speaker 1: sliding down the face of a wave, a giant swastika
[3:02] Speaker 1: in the background. Enjoy the thrill of a swastika is
[3:06] Speaker 1: the slogan.
[3:08] Speaker 2: The swastika... It has a very interesting story, both in
[3:11] Speaker 2: surfing and outside of it. It's an incredibly iconic symbol,
[3:16] Speaker 2: like the cross or the crescent or so many others.
[3:19] Speaker 2: And it wasn't until the Nazis adopted it that anything
[3:23] Speaker 2: was thought of it. But as soon as Hitler actually
[3:27] Speaker 2: invaded Poland, they stopped making them.
[3:32] Speaker 1: In 1938, the board was renamed the Waikiki Model. 1938
[3:37] Speaker 1: was a momentous year for Hitler's campaign in Europe. It
[3:41] Speaker 1: was the year of Anschluss, the German army's annexation of Austria,
[3:45] Speaker 1: and Kristallnacht, a devastating pogrom against Jews in Germany, Austria,
[3:51] Speaker 1: and German-occupied Czechoslovakia. The Waikiki model board didn't come with
[3:56] Speaker 1: a swastika on it. I happen to think 1938 is
[4:02] Speaker 1: a little late to have dropped the swastika branding. All
[4:05] Speaker 1: the way back in the 1920s, Hitler had published Mein
[4:08] Speaker 1: Kampf with a swastika on the cover, describing it as
[4:11] Speaker 1: a symbol of Aryan victory. But in California, swastika boards
[4:17] Speaker 1: were in circulation for as long as the boards lasted.
[4:21] Speaker 1: Surfers didn't seem to be ashamed of them. They cherished them.
[4:26] Speaker 1: Gard Chapin, Mickey's stepdad, was into making his own surfboards.
[4:30] Speaker 1: And when Mickey got into surfing, Gard made one for him,
[4:33] Speaker 1: shaving down an old swastika board. This would have been
[4:36] Speaker 1: around 1950, when the atrocities committed by the Nazis under
[4:40] Speaker 1: the sign of the swastika were well known to the
[4:43] Speaker 1: entire world. The question was, did surfers even care? Or
[4:49] Speaker 1: did that symbol gain cachet in some of their minds?
[4:53] Speaker 1: I don't know if Mickey's swastika board had an actual
[4:56] Speaker 1: swastika on it. Doesn't really matter, though. Well, it didn't
[5:00] Speaker 1: matter to Mickey. Because way, way later, Mickey would ride
[5:04] Speaker 1: an up-to-date custom fiberglass board with a big old swastika
[5:08] Speaker 1: on the underside. The existence of the swastika model boards
[5:12] Speaker 1: is a kind of screen that surfers can duck behind.
[5:15] Speaker 1: Nazi symbols, they can say, are part of surf history.
[5:20] Speaker 1: But all that feels like a diversion from the real story,
[5:23] Speaker 1: which is that America's shameful history of exclusion and racial
[5:26] Speaker 1: policing continues to this day. on beaches, and in coastal
[5:31] Speaker 1: communities in the country's most liberal state. Mickey Dora didn't
[5:36] Speaker 1: invent this bigotry, but he made it a style. He
[5:41] Speaker 1: is the California folk hero and avatar of youth culture
[5:45] Speaker 1: that made hate cool. I'm Dana Goodyear, and this is
[5:52] Speaker 1: Lost Hills.
[5:53] Speaker 4: Lost Hills.
[6:19] Speaker 1: Episode 5, Surf Nazi.
[6:27] Speaker 5: My name is Dan Duane, and I'm a writer and
[6:29] Speaker 5: surfer living in San Francisco.
[6:32] Speaker 1: And how did you get into surfing?
[6:34] Speaker 5: I had a cool uncle in Southern California who was
[6:37] Speaker 5: a great surfer, a very dedicated surfer. So I kind
[6:40] Speaker 5: of grew up wanting to be like my cool uncle.
[6:44] Speaker 5: And maybe also, you know, getting... tacit, implicit reassurance from
[6:50] Speaker 5: him that surfing could be mine if I wanted it
[6:52] Speaker 5: to be.
[6:55] Speaker 1: Deciding to pick up surfing should be the simplest thing
[6:57] Speaker 1: in the world. You get aboard, go to the beach,
[7:00] Speaker 1: you mess around, you figure it out. In California, by
[7:04] Speaker 1: law anyway, all the beaches are free and open to
[7:07] Speaker 1: the public. But it doesn't always turn out to be
[7:10] Speaker 1: so simple. It wasn't for Dan.
[7:13] Speaker 5: I was really an outsider to the culture. Because I
[7:17] Speaker 5: was a Berkeley kid, you know, I hadn't grown up
[7:18] Speaker 5: in San Clemente or Malibu or San Diego. And when
[7:23] Speaker 5: I started surfing a lot, like at age 21 in
[7:26] Speaker 5: Santa Cruz, the sort of, you know, local hierarchy, who
[7:29] Speaker 5: gets to get a wave, who doesn't, was more intense.
[7:32] Speaker 5: And I was really an outsider. And I felt that
[7:35] Speaker 5: pretty acutely, you know. I had to kind of fight
[7:39] Speaker 5: my way in.
[7:41] Speaker 1: Like happens to a lot of people who fall in
[7:42] Speaker 1: love with surfing, Dan got a little obsessed. He wanted
[7:46] Speaker 1: to learn about the history of the sport, specifically in California.
[7:50] Speaker 1: He went down a rabbit hole of online photos, books,
[7:53] Speaker 1: and early surf movies. And that led him straight to Mickey.
[7:59] Speaker 5: You can't really immerse yourself in a self-education project about
[8:02] Speaker 5: surf culture without at some point bumping into stories of
[8:06] Speaker 5: Mickey Dora in the early days of Malibu. And at
[8:09] Speaker 5: the heart of it all was this guy, Mickey Dora,
[8:11] Speaker 5: was this incredible, incredibly beautiful surfer. I mean, a beautiful man.
[8:16] Speaker 5: So a very good looking guy, very, very handsome guy.
[8:20] Speaker 5: And to be honest, enviably handsome in a ways, a
[8:22] Speaker 5: lot of ways I wished I looked, you know, he
[8:24] Speaker 5: had this beautiful deep tan and this perfect kind of
[8:27] Speaker 5: athletic build. And the way he surfed was just gorgeous
[8:31] Speaker 5: and cat-like. And he kind of emerges as really the
[8:35] Speaker 5: central culture hero, I would say, of California surfing. And
[8:40] Speaker 5: there were aspects of his identity that I I never
[8:42] Speaker 5: really totally loved to begin with. Like, he was a
[8:45] Speaker 5: pretty wealthy kid, so he drove beautiful cars and wore
[8:49] Speaker 5: beautiful clothes and had a kind of surly localism. He's
[8:54] Speaker 5: credited by many with being the sort of originator of localism.
[8:59] Speaker 1: This was what Dan encountered when he was first getting
[9:01] Speaker 1: into surfing. Localism. Localism is a phenomenon throughout surfing. It's
[9:10] Speaker 1: basically that some people, the self-nominated locals, treat strangers with
[9:15] Speaker 1: hostility because those people are likely to get in the way.
[9:20] Speaker 5: At the heart of surf culture, there is this inescapable problem,
[9:25] Speaker 5: which is waves are a limited resource. There aren't an
[9:29] Speaker 5: endless number of them. And good waves that break in
[9:32] Speaker 5: the right place at a good spot on that rare
[9:35] Speaker 5: day when the perfect swell and tide and wind all
[9:38] Speaker 5: line up, I mean, there might be a lot, but
[9:40] Speaker 5: there just is not an infinite number of them. So
[9:44] Speaker 5: if you live near them and you've built your whole
[9:45] Speaker 5: kind of life and happiness around the good feeling they
[9:50] Speaker 5: give you and you've dedicated your childhood and your adolescence
[9:53] Speaker 5: to it and you've spent all this time and emotional
[9:55] Speaker 5: energy fighting your way into the local pack and the
[9:58] Speaker 5: hierarchy and all that, those waves are really precious. They're
[10:02] Speaker 5: really important gems in your life. And to have some
[10:07] Speaker 5: random strength just show up and paddle out and get
[10:11] Speaker 5: in your way and take that wave that was going
[10:13] Speaker 5: to be your set wave it's not it's not great
[10:15] Speaker 5: to have a thousand of them show up and do
[10:18] Speaker 5: that is horrible so that's kind of the fundamental driver
[10:21] Speaker 5: i think of localism in surfing and of secrecy right
[10:25] Speaker 5: don't tell anybody about the break don't tell anybody where.
[10:27] Speaker 1: We're going There have been many ugly instances of locals
[10:31] Speaker 1: defending their turf with actual violence. For decades, in Palos Verdes,
[10:40] Speaker 1: down the coast from Malibu, the local Bay Boys harassed
[10:44] Speaker 1: outsiders so badly, throwing rocks at them from the cliffs above,
[10:49] Speaker 1: mocking them with blackface, that victims sued in federal court.
[10:54] Speaker 1: The case was dismissed, though a state court did ban
[10:57] Speaker 1: 12 of the Bay Boys from the surf break for
[11:00] Speaker 1: a year. Then, just a few months ago, in March
[11:03] Speaker 1: of 2023, an appeals court judge offered an opinion suggesting
[11:08] Speaker 1: that localism, as it was practiced in Palos Verdes, is
[11:11] Speaker 1: a violation of a state law known as the Coastal Act,
[11:15] Speaker 1: which ensures equal access to the coast. So this is
[11:19] Speaker 1: an issue that has not gone away.
[11:21] Speaker 5: There used to be stories about you know, guys would
[11:23] Speaker 5: get out of the water and find their car tires
[11:25] Speaker 5: slashed and surf wax rubbed all over the windshield. Or
[11:29] Speaker 5: I think I remember hearing once a story about a
[11:31] Speaker 5: horse's head cut off or a cow's head or something
[11:33] Speaker 5: cut off and put in their driver's seat. I did
[11:37] Speaker 5: once a long time ago do a surf travel story
[11:41] Speaker 5: about a remote, somewhat secret surf spot in far Northern
[11:45] Speaker 5: California that got me like actual death threats emailed to
[11:49] Speaker 5: me and And it was sort of an amazing thing
[11:51] Speaker 5: because I didn't say what the place was called and
[11:53] Speaker 5: I didn't say where it, I put it in an
[11:56] Speaker 5: 80 mile stretch of the Northern California coast. That was
[11:59] Speaker 5: as precise as I got. And I got, um, uh,
[12:05] Speaker 5: and some, some guy up there went nuts and, you know, said,
[12:08] Speaker 5: I'm coming for your family.
[12:09] Speaker 4: And, you know, I don't know.
[12:11] Speaker 5: It was, it was upsetting for a while.
[12:14] Speaker 1: That is extreme.
[12:15] Speaker 5: It was pretty extreme. Yeah.
[12:22] Speaker 1: Mickey Dora claimed that he invented localism. And at Malibu,
[12:28] Speaker 1: he was famous for pushing people off waves.
[12:31] Speaker 2: He glamorized the idea of being aggressive in pushing other
[12:39] Speaker 2: people out of the way on a wave. And the
[12:41] Speaker 2: idea that the wave that I take off on belongs
[12:44] Speaker 2: to me. And that became codified.
[12:48] Speaker 1: This is Jim Kempton from the California Surf Museum again.
[12:52] Speaker 1: Jim knew Mickey in his prime.
[12:55] Speaker 2: And that created a sense that was bound to be
[13:00] Speaker 2: a conflict. And so you wouldn't necessarily say that Mickey
[13:06] Speaker 2: invented that or that he created the environment, but he
[13:10] Speaker 2: definitely glamorized it and he definitely popularized the idea of
[13:15] Speaker 2: that and that whether they knew it or not, that
[13:18] Speaker 2: trickled down in every place there was.
[13:22] Speaker 1: Localism isn't always racist, but often the factors that make
[13:26] Speaker 1: you an insider or an outsider break cleanly across racial lines.
[13:31] Speaker 1: Do you live by the coast? Did you go to
[13:33] Speaker 1: school with the people in the water? Did you grow
[13:36] Speaker 1: up on this beach? Or are you not from around here?
[13:42] Speaker 1: On the beach in Malibu, Mickey was always spoiling for
[13:45] Speaker 1: a fight. As he patrolled the waves he thought belonged
[13:49] Speaker 1: to him, he used the symbols and the signs and
[13:52] Speaker 1: the language of the most destructive hate group in modern history. Mickey,
[14:10] Speaker 1: in spite of being an immigrant himself and having a
[14:13] Speaker 1: dad with a heavy accent, leaned hard into surf break xenophobia.
[14:18] Speaker 1: In a piece he wrote for Surfer magazine in 1967,
[14:21] Speaker 1: he described Malibu as a place taken over by, quote,
[14:24] Speaker 1: In a 1998 interview in Surfer's Journal, Nat Young, a
[14:27] Speaker 1: famous Australian surfer of the day, who knew Mickey well, said, quote,
[14:42] Speaker 1: he's a supreme racist, always has been. When I was younger,
[14:46] Speaker 1: I believed it was all just in mirth, that he
[14:49] Speaker 1: was just jiving it all. But no, he believes absolutely
[14:53] Speaker 1: in white supremacy, unquote. At some point, Mickey started showing
[15:00] Speaker 1: up to the beach in an SS leather trench coat.
[15:03] Speaker 1: That's the uniform of the Nazi racial elite who controlled
[15:06] Speaker 1: the concentration camps. And when Mickey described his efforts to
[15:11] Speaker 1: control the wave at Malibu, he didn't hold back. This
[15:15] Speaker 1: is from a 1963 interview titled The Angry Young Man
[15:18] Speaker 1: of Surfing, which ran in Surf Guide. Quote, These guys
[15:23] Speaker 1: take off in front of me and they're scared to death.
[15:25] Speaker 1: They know I'm behind them, but they never know what
[15:27] Speaker 1: I'll do next. They run up and put their feet
[15:29] Speaker 1: on the nose and I give them a little nudge
[15:31] Speaker 1: in the tail block. They start to corkscrew. It never fails.
[15:35] Speaker 1: This calls for some unpacking. To Mickey, wave enforcement was
[15:38] Speaker 1: a military operation, a dogfight out of World War II. Only,
[15:40] Speaker 1: he puts himself on the side of the Nazis. A
[16:00] Speaker 1: Messerschmitt is a German fighter plane, one that was built
[16:04] Speaker 1: using slave labor in concentration camps. That's what Mickey imagines
[16:09] Speaker 1: his surfboard to be. So let's talk about swastikas.
[16:14] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[16:15] Speaker 1: This is the writer Dan Duane again. I asked him
[16:17] Speaker 1: when he first remembers seeing Nazi imagery associated with surfing.
[16:23] Speaker 5: I must have been 21 years old, let's say. So
[16:26] Speaker 5: one day I was at a break in Santa Cruz
[16:28] Speaker 5: called Pleasure Point, right in town. Beautiful, beautiful Point Break.
[16:33] Speaker 5: And there was a swastika spray painted on a seawall
[16:36] Speaker 5: where I was about to walk down to the beach.
[16:39] Speaker 5: You know, I think it said something like, kooks go home.
[16:42] Speaker 5: At the time, I read it as, wow, there's like
[16:46] Speaker 5: some hardcore nasty locals around here who don't want me,
[16:49] Speaker 5: people like me, to paddle out. But it was sort
[16:52] Speaker 5: of later over the years that I started to see
[16:54] Speaker 5: more swastika imagery in surf culture that I kept sort
[16:58] Speaker 5: of thinking back to and remembering that swastika that I'd
[17:01] Speaker 5: seen and wondering how to make sense of it and
[17:03] Speaker 5: what did it mean.
[17:05] Speaker 1: Surf culture has been awash in Nazi symbols from the
[17:08] Speaker 1: moment it went mainstream. Swastikas, iron crosses, SS uniforms, they're
[17:14] Speaker 1: all over the place in American surf history. In the
[17:18] Speaker 1: late 50s and early 60s, a five-part surf documentary called
[17:22] Speaker 1: Search for Surf came out. Search for Surf includes a
[17:26] Speaker 1: segment shot at Windensee Beach down the coast from Malibu
[17:30] Speaker 1: in La Jolla in 1959, the year the Gidget movie
[17:33] Speaker 1: came out. Young men in Nazi uniforms ride toboggans down
[17:37] Speaker 1: a storm drain to the beach. They're greeted by a
[17:40] Speaker 1: cheering crowd of shirtless teenagers waving swastika flags. The scene
[17:46] Speaker 1: is absurd, but that doesn't make it any less appalling.
[17:50] Speaker 1: The movie was directed by Greg Knoll, a big wave
[17:53] Speaker 1: surfer who was also a good friend of Mickey's.
[17:56] Speaker 6: Greg famously talked about all of the stuff that surfers
[18:01] Speaker 6: did in the 50s, especially. It was designed with nothing
[18:06] Speaker 6: more than to piss people off.
[18:09] Speaker 1: Surf historian Matt Warshaw.
[18:11] Speaker 6: So he said, you know, you'd paint a swastika on
[18:13] Speaker 6: your car and it would piss people off. So you'd
[18:16] Speaker 6: paint two swastikas on the car, one on each side.
[18:20] Speaker 6: And for him, that was on the same level as
[18:23] Speaker 6: going to school as he did in a trench coat
[18:26] Speaker 6: with each pocket filled with rotten fish. He would just
[18:29] Speaker 6: sit there until someone said, what does that smell? And
[18:32] Speaker 6: it was just him trying to piss people off. It
[18:35] Speaker 6: was kids from 14 to 18 mostly doing anything they
[18:39] Speaker 6: could to get a rise out of the squares.
[18:44] Speaker 1: Then there's the craze in the 1960s where Southern California
[18:47] Speaker 1: surfers were wearing Nazi stormtrooper helmets while surfing. I don't
[18:52] Speaker 1: think they were worried about concussions. I don't really know
[18:55] Speaker 1: what they were doing. I do know that it's hard
[18:58] Speaker 1: for the surf community to explain. So they end up
[19:02] Speaker 1: saying a bunch of different things, none of which make sense.
[19:06] Speaker 1: It was to piss off the older generation, to be
[19:09] Speaker 1: a rebel.
[19:11] Speaker 2: I saw it, but I didn't really realize the ramifications
[19:14] Speaker 2: of it, you know, when you're a kid.
[19:15] Speaker 5: It's just part of their kind of having an attitude
[19:19] Speaker 5: of being a rebel or.
[19:20] Speaker 3: Something, you know.
[19:22] Speaker 1: It was a celebration of the victory over the Nazis.
[19:25] Speaker 7: The people from the war came home with these emblems
[19:30] Speaker 7: and drawings and stuff, and they brought it home as
[19:33] Speaker 7: souvenirs from having fought in World War II.
[19:36] Speaker 1: It was a cool, ancient symbol.
[19:39] Speaker 8: I do know that that's an ancient symbol that started
[19:43] Speaker 8: in Egypt. The American Indians used it widely, and they
[19:47] Speaker 8: called it the tumbling logs.
[19:50] Speaker 1: They didn't know what they were doing.
[19:52] Speaker 2: There's an enormous ignorance of any of the actual representations
[19:58] Speaker 2: that those are, what they stand for.
[20:02] Speaker 1: But Mickey was supposedly so smart and so worldly, he
[20:07] Speaker 1: definitely knew the implications of a swastika. Anti-Semitism was a style,
[20:13] Speaker 1: and Mickey helped set the trend. He was the guy
[20:16] Speaker 1: Surfer Magazine called Mr. Malibu, everyone's idol, and he was
[20:21] Speaker 1: wearing an SS leather trench coat on the beach. What
[20:26] Speaker 1: was Mickey up to with his SS leather trench coat
[20:31] Speaker 1: and his swastikas?
[20:33] Speaker 2: So, I think they were attention getters.
[20:39] Speaker 1: Surf Museum President Jim Kempton.
[20:42] Speaker 2: Mickey was almost always in costume.
[20:45] Speaker 3: Truly.
[20:46] Speaker 2: It was rare for Mickey not to Be like rock
[20:51] Speaker 2: stars are. Why do rock stars wear sequins and fringe
[20:58] Speaker 2: and leather pants? Because they're rock stars. It's to indicate
[21:03] Speaker 2: to other people that I am not just a regular guy.
[21:09] Speaker 2: I'm someone.
[21:12] Speaker 1: Well into the 80s, agro-surfers called themselves surf Nazis. And yes,
[21:18] Speaker 1: these symbols have also been used by other rebellious cultures,
[21:22] Speaker 1: biker gangs, British punk rockers. When it comes to surf culture,
[21:26] Speaker 1: what everyone, even Kathy Kohn or Zuckerman, will tell you is, no,
[21:31] Speaker 1: it isn't what you think. No one who loves surfing
[21:35] Speaker 1: wants all the Nazi references to mean anything. One thing
[21:39] Speaker 1: you hear a lot from swastika apologists is that it
[21:42] Speaker 1: was a different time. It was. It was a time...
[21:47] Speaker 1: that was much closer to the horrors of the Holocaust.
[21:51] Speaker 1: Writer Dan Duane.
[21:53] Speaker 5: There has been this argument that the early swastikas didn't
[21:57] Speaker 5: mean fascist sympathy. That they were just, you know, symbols
[22:02] Speaker 5: of rebellion. That they were just, you know, whatever the
[22:04] Speaker 5: enemy is wearing, that's what I want to wear, because
[22:06] Speaker 5: then I'm like a bad dude. Or that in the
[22:08] Speaker 5: early surf movies with the, you know, with the Gestapo
[22:11] Speaker 5: uniforms or whatever it was, the SS uniforms, that it's
[22:14] Speaker 5: a form of pranking and play and culture play. And
[22:19] Speaker 5: I'm not ready to say that that's a hundred percent wrong.
[22:23] Speaker 5: I'm just not ready to say that it's a hundred
[22:25] Speaker 5: percent right either. There's just too much in the air
[22:27] Speaker 5: at the time. It's too close in historical time to,
[22:32] Speaker 5: you know, that movie is made in the fifties with Auschwitz.
[22:36] Speaker 3: What is it?
[22:36] Speaker 5: You know, 10 years before, I mean, Auschwitz is more
[22:39] Speaker 5: recent to that movie than nine 11 is to us. It's,
[22:43] Speaker 5: it's not, you know, It's not ancient history.
[22:50] Speaker 1: For Dan, it's a quick slide from the nastiness Mickey
[22:54] Speaker 1: Dora put into the world to the nastiness that still
[22:57] Speaker 1: exists in certain pockets of surf culture.
[23:01] Speaker 5: So now we've got like a rich kid in fancy
[23:03] Speaker 5: sunglasses and fancy clothes and a fancy sports car passing
[23:07] Speaker 5: bad checks and putting swastikas on his board and being
[23:11] Speaker 5: a jerk to outsiders because they don't know how to surf,
[23:13] Speaker 5: and spewing all this vile stuff, I don't know, it
[23:18] Speaker 5: just kind of started to turn, you know, green and
[23:21] Speaker 5: gross inside and feel to me like there's something wrong
[23:23] Speaker 5: with this. Like there's just this guy, I don't know.
[23:27] Speaker 5: Why is this creep our big culture hero?
[23:42] Speaker 1: In public, Mickey was slippery about his identity. Even as
[23:46] Speaker 1: he wore the Iron Cross and the SS trench and
[23:49] Speaker 1: rode the swastika board, he referred to himself as a, quote,
[23:53] Speaker 1: wandering rabbi. One of his closest friends at the end
[23:57] Speaker 1: of his life told me he had always assumed Mickey
[24:00] Speaker 1: was part Jewish, on his Hungarian side. It's possible. The
[24:05] Speaker 1: name Dora does come up in a couple of Holocaust
[24:07] Speaker 1: memorial records from Budapest. But Mickey's half-sister, Pauline, who didn't
[24:12] Speaker 1: want to be interviewed, wrote in an email that she
[24:14] Speaker 1: had never heard that the family was Jewish. I suppose
[24:18] Speaker 1: I wanted it to be true, because it would give
[24:21] Speaker 1: a different texture to some of Mickey's behavior. Miklos Dora,
[24:25] Speaker 1: Mickey's father, worked for the Baron de Rothschild starting in
[24:29] Speaker 1: the mid-60s. The Rothschilds are one of the oldest Jewish
[24:32] Speaker 1: families in Europe, the first unconverted Jews to be inducted
[24:36] Speaker 1: into the House of Lords. They're also at the center
[24:39] Speaker 1: of just about every anti-Semitic conspiracy theory you can think of.
[24:44] Speaker 1: In some corners of the Internet, they're responsible for World
[24:47] Speaker 1: War II and 9-11. Mickey loved this connection to the aristocracy.
[24:54] Speaker 1: When he had the chance, he stole some letterhead from
[24:57] Speaker 1: the Baron's desk and gleefully used it to conduct his correspondence.
[25:01] Speaker 1: Mickey also embraced the idea that he had a Romani background,
[25:05] Speaker 1: calling himself the Gypsy Cavalier. Like the Jews, the Roma
[25:09] Speaker 1: were considered, quote, racially inferior and murdered by the Nazis.
[25:15] Speaker 1: But when he had his own surfboard line, Decat, made
[25:18] Speaker 1: by Greg Knoll of cute teen Nazis on the beach fame,
[25:22] Speaker 1: Mickey dressed up in his SS leather trench and sported
[25:25] Speaker 1: a monogrammed iron cross for the advertising campaign. Was the
[25:30] Speaker 1: Nazi schtick just mockery of dumb surfers for their ignorance
[25:35] Speaker 1: by someone who conceivably might have been Jewish or Romani?
[25:39] Speaker 1: Someone who, if he had grown up in Hungary and
[25:41] Speaker 1: not Los Angeles, might have suffered at the hands of
[25:44] Speaker 1: the Nazis? How complicated a mind game was Mickey playing?
[25:58] Speaker 1: This place is cool.
[25:59] Speaker 4: It's a Tudor house in the middle of Southern California
[26:05] Speaker 4: subdivision land. I see an old mustard yellow VW van
[26:12] Speaker 4: that looks like it's in mint condition. Hi, I'm Dana.
[26:19] Speaker 1: Nice to meet you. Thank you for letting us come over.
[26:25] Speaker 1: I'm in Riverside, California, at the home of a guy
[26:27] Speaker 1: I've been told knew Mickey better than just about anyone else.
[26:32] Speaker 3: I am Rick Peterson.
[26:36] Speaker 1: What do you do for work?
[26:39] Speaker 3: Nothing. I'm retired.
[26:41] Speaker 1: You're a painter, I thought.
[26:43] Speaker 3: I was a professional artist for like three decades. And,
[26:49] Speaker 3: you know, had shows all over Europe and here and,
[26:51] Speaker 3: you know. But it got too nasty. Only about 20
[26:56] Speaker 3: years ago, I pretty much burned out on it.
[27:00] Speaker 1: Rick met Mickey at Malibu in the late 50s or
[27:02] Speaker 1: early 60s. Mickey was about 13 years older, but they
[27:06] Speaker 1: shared a worldview. They were the ascetes at the beach,
[27:09] Speaker 1: talking about art and fine wine.
[27:11] Speaker 3: He was my best male friend. If nothing else, I
[27:17] Speaker 3: mean long term, my God, I never knew anybody that long.
[27:21] Speaker 1: Rick is a bit of a recluse, and he says
[27:22] Speaker 1: he's very reluctant to give an interview about Mickey. It
[27:26] Speaker 1: feels disloyal. He keeps looking up at the sky, cringing almost,
[27:31] Speaker 1: apologizing to Mickey for talking about him without his permission.
[27:36] Speaker 3: My interest in doing this really is for, you know, posterity,
[27:42] Speaker 3: such as it may be, for whatever reason, to round
[27:44] Speaker 3: him out, you know, and eliminate the bullshit, you know,
[27:48] Speaker 3: and what who he really was. He was a very nice,
[27:51] Speaker 3: decent person. Loved animals. You know, loved nice things. Lived
[28:00] Speaker 3: very simply, but had great appreciation for the finer things.
[28:05] Speaker 1: Rick says he wants to set the record straight because
[28:08] Speaker 1: he knows that Mickey has a reputation.
[28:11] Speaker 3: Well, there's stories about that. You know, I don't know
[28:14] Speaker 3: if I need to go into that. You know, there's
[28:15] Speaker 3: enough Enough of this, you know, legendary stuff, so-called, you know,
[28:19] Speaker 3: that somebody else might have a take on. But yeah,
[28:23] Speaker 3: he had ways of dealing with the crowd. Let's put
[28:25] Speaker 3: it that way.
[28:27] Speaker 1: Do you think some of the sort of bad Mickey
[28:31] Speaker 1: stories are untrue or exaggerated?
[28:35] Speaker 3: Yes. Absolutely, you know.
[28:38] Speaker 1: And why do you think that happened? Like, what?
[28:43] Speaker 3: People are stupid. You know? I have no idea. That's
[28:47] Speaker 3: their problem, not mine.
[28:48] Speaker 1: Do you think Mickey played into that sort of myth
[28:51] Speaker 1: of the Dark Prince?
[28:52] Speaker 6: No.
[28:53] Speaker 7: No.
[28:56] Speaker 1: Rick's made it clear that he wants to avoid controversial topics,
[29:00] Speaker 1: but I have to ask him about Mickey's bigotry. One
[29:03] Speaker 1: of the things that's confusing about him from an outsider,
[29:06] Speaker 1: you know, someone who I never knew him, obviously, I never,
[29:09] Speaker 1: you know, but a lot of people say, oh, he was...
[29:16] Speaker 1: bigoted against Jewish people and black people. And then a
[29:20] Speaker 1: lot of other people say, no, no, no, you don't
[29:23] Speaker 1: understand at all. He wasn't. Do you have any insight
[29:26] Speaker 1: that you can share with us about that? No, no, no, no, no, no.
[29:31] Speaker 3: He wasn't. I mean, there are things that passed at
[29:38] Speaker 3: one time that wouldn't pass now, not necessarily applied to Mickey,
[29:41] Speaker 3: but just generally, you know, and now they have this
[29:44] Speaker 3: woke thing. And I mean, my God, you know, You
[29:47] Speaker 3: open your mouth and you got 50 people in front
[29:48] Speaker 3: of your house with pitchforks and torches.
[29:52] Speaker 1: I mean I know that certain symbols like the swastika
[29:56] Speaker 1: is kind of part of surf culture.
[29:58] Speaker 3: In certain ways swastika is an ancient symbol from the
[30:02] Speaker 3: orient you know it's on buddhas and American Indians it's
[30:07] Speaker 3: a great design.
[30:10] Speaker 1: But after the 1930s, it doesn't have the same meaning anymore.
[30:13] Speaker 3: Well, you know, surfers adopted a lot of things. Iron
[30:17] Speaker 3: crosses and, you know.
[30:19] Speaker 1: Yeah, a lot of fascist symbols.
[30:21] Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't give any credence to any of that stuff.
[30:23] Speaker 1: But Mickey was into it. He wore that stuff.
[30:26] Speaker 3: Well, I think he put a swastika on a board
[30:28] Speaker 3: one time just to piss somebody off. To be a
[30:31] Speaker 3: little contrary, you know. Raised a few eyebrows at Malibu. Oh,
[30:36] Speaker 3: look at that, you know. Yeah, you know.
[30:41] Speaker 1: After we talk outside for a while, Rick shows me
[30:43] Speaker 1: around the inside of his house, which is filled with
[30:45] Speaker 1: Mickey memorabilia. One of Mickey's fake Rolexes, a passport he
[30:49] Speaker 1: had made for his dog, Scooter Boy. It's basically a
[30:53] Speaker 1: private Mickey museum, curated by one of Mickey's biggest fanboys.
[30:58] Speaker 1: Just as I'm about to leave, he offers to show
[31:00] Speaker 1: me his yellow 1972 VW van. It's kept under an
[31:05] Speaker 1: awning at the backside of the house. It's in great condition.
[31:09] Speaker 1: obviously a possession Rick is really proud of. Vanity plate, R. Volksy.
[31:14] Speaker 3: For some reason, I peek through the back window.
[31:22] Speaker 6: There's a surfboard in there.
[31:25] Speaker 3: That's a catboard dupe. I had a friend that made surfboards,
[31:37] Speaker 3: and he copied one for me.
[31:40] Speaker 1: It's a copy of the kind of board Mickey made
[31:42] Speaker 1: with Greg Knoll, a Decat board. It's bright yellow, and
[31:46] Speaker 1: it's got bubble writing on it that says, Idi Amin,
[31:50] Speaker 1: as in the brutal dictator of Uganda. Okay. That's weird.
[31:59] Speaker 1: But not as weird as what else I see on
[32:01] Speaker 1: the board. An ancient symbol from the Orient. You've got
[32:07] Speaker 1: a swastika on your board, too.
[32:11] Speaker 3: A number of things. That's my Idi Amin. You know,
[32:15] Speaker 3: I just put that on there.
[32:17] Speaker 1: No, I am not a Nazi!
[32:22] Speaker 3: Remember Dr. Strangelove, man?
[32:26] Speaker 1: No, my inferior!
[32:28] Speaker 3: No! We were all degenerates, what can I say? Antisocial, demented, anarchist.
[32:57] Speaker 1: This is the first time I've seen, in person, a
[33:00] Speaker 1: surfboard with a swastika on it. It's a board that's
[33:03] Speaker 1: a knockoff of Mickey's brand, Decat, so it's an homage
[33:07] Speaker 1: to the Dark Prince of Malibu, by a friend of
[33:09] Speaker 1: Mickey's who's denied the entire premise of my questions about
[33:13] Speaker 1: Mickey's beliefs when it came to white supremacy and fascism.
[33:17] Speaker 1: He wasn't going to help me make sense of the contradictions.
[33:21] Speaker 1: But in a way, seeing this board does. There's no
[33:26] Speaker 1: nuance here, no getting it or not getting it. I
[33:30] Speaker 1: get it. Seeing a swastika on a surfboard feels absolutely terrible.
[33:38] Speaker 1: This is the layer of the Mikidora onion where I
[33:42] Speaker 1: just want to cry.
[33:43] Speaker 3: ¶ ¶.
[33:58] Speaker 1: In the next episode of Lost Hills, Mickey has a
[34:01] Speaker 1: secret life.
[34:04] Speaker 9: It was on Gretna Green in Brentwood, and there was
[34:07] Speaker 9: a row of maybe four little one-bedroom apartments. Ours was
[34:14] Speaker 9: in the back. It had a garage where he could
[34:18] Speaker 9: keep all his boards and cars, you know, his antique cars.
[34:24] Speaker 9: And of course, I was always warned never, ever to
[34:27] Speaker 9: let anybody know where he lived. So our whole relationship
[34:34] Speaker 9: was super, super secret.
[34:36] Speaker 1: What was behind all that secrecy?
[34:39] Speaker 9: Probably afraid that somebody was going to come and steal
[34:42] Speaker 9: stuff that he probably already stole. In other words, a
[34:47] Speaker 9: thief is always suspicious that someone's going to come and
[34:51] Speaker 9: steal from them.
[34:53] Speaker 1: That's next in Episode 6, Fuck the World. Lost Hills
[34:59] Speaker 1: is written and reported by me, Dana Goodyear. It's created
[35:03] Speaker 1: by me and Ben Adair and produced by Western Sound
[35:06] Speaker 1: and Pushkin Industries. Subscribe to Pushkin Plus and you can
[35:10] Speaker 1: binge the entire season right now ad-free. Find Pushkin Plus
[35:14] Speaker 1: on the Lost Hills show page in Apple Podcasts or
[35:17] Speaker 1: at pushkin.fm/.plus.

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